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To Cook Salsify or Oyster Plant

A boiled salsify dish flavored with milk, butter, flour, pepper, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Cook Salsify or Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and slice the salsify into round pieces.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Add sweet milk or cream and a piece of butter rolled in flour.

  2. Season with pepper and a little salt, then let simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and pour over vinegar sweetened with sugar.

  4. Mix well and serve hot in a covered dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salsify or oyster plant
Forms the main body of the dish, providing its tender, mild vegetable texture.
Sweet milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, creating a creamy coating around the salsify.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and with flour helps thicken the creamy liquid.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream when mixed with butter, giving the sauce body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the creamy sauce and balances its richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the vinegar, softening its sharpness so it balances the acidity.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the milk or cream. If the butter-flour piece is not broken up and stirred in, it can form lumps or leave raw flour taste. Flour needs to be dispersed and heated to thicken smoothly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More salsify recipes

Stewed 41Fried 30Fritters 26Boiled 18Soup 13Stew 10 See all 28 →

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